


my only home

by youaremarvelous



Series: Yuri!!! on Ice Tumblr Drabbles [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: #husbandshaming, Cheating (but not really), Domestic Fluff, Drabble Collection, Feeding Kink, Kid Fic, M/M, Post-Canon, Rivals, Silly Husbands, Social Media, Tumblr Prompt, Viktor snores, Yuuri and Vik both suck at chores, Yuuri writes fanfiction, and somehow it has become Yuuri's lullaby, baby photos, bitter ones, drunk shenans, they settle the disputes mostly through social media and tickle fights
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-25 23:08:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 12,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9850985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youaremarvelous/pseuds/youaremarvelous
Summary: An ongoing collection of the Yuri!!! on Ice drabbles I've written on tumblr.Tags and characters will be added as they appear.





	1. of colicky babies and proud husbands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the fanfiction trope ask meme. The prompt was "kidfic / next gen."

“Vitya, where are you?”  
  
**  
**

Viktor holds his phone between his cheek and shoulder, dropping an armful of paper grocery bags into the dark trunk of his pink convertible.  
  
  


“I’m just leaving the store, solnyshko. How’s our little angel?”  
  
  


“Trying to break the sound barrier.” Yuuri sighs audibly and bounces the shrieking baby nestled in the crook of his elbow. “You’ve been gone nearly two hours.”  
  
  


“Hmm?” Viktor hums. “It can’t’ve been that long.” He pulls his phone back when his hands are free and startles at the time. “Err, about that–” he combs a hand through his tangled hair–”you know I can’t help but show off baby pictures to the cashiers.”  
  
  


Yuuri massages his temples, quietly shushing the squirming angry bundle in his arms. “Just how many pictures did you show them?”  
  
  


Viktor shrugs noncommittally. “Just one or two…hundred. Anyway, I’ll be home soon! I made sure to get the rice milk like you wanted!”  
  
  


“Vitya, I said rice _cereal_.” Yuuri groans, rushing the baby to her sleeper when she starts to arch her back in his arms. “You know, the one in the infant aisle? In the blue and white box?”  
  
  


Viktor curses under his breath, wincing when a particularly loud cry crackles through the phone speaker. “Yura…are you okay?” He asks hesitantly, already sprinting back to the store.    
  
  


“That wasn’t me, it was the baby.” Yuuri sniffs unconvincingly. “Just please, get home.”  
  
  


Viktor manages to locate the cereal and rejoin the checkout line in a matter of seconds. Despite having been initially grumpy at being forced from bed in the middle of the night for cures for their colicky baby, he’s thankful for it when the register is blessedly free.  
  
  


The cashier smiles at him knowingly when he hobbles up to her. He knows he looks a mess: his hair bed-rumpled, dark rings under his eyes, and spittle the shape of a poodle (gross but impressive) on his nightgown.  
  
  


“Baby at home, huh?” She laughs, ringing up the cereal.  
  
  


Viktor looks down at the drying stain and shrugs. “A cute one, would you like to see?”  
  
  


He’s only just moved on from his child’s photo album to the album of Yuuri’s baby pictures when his phone buzzes in his hand. Viktor freezes, staring up at the cashier with wide eyes. “I–uh, should probably go. Thanks!” He grabs the forgotten cereal box off the conveyer belt, slaps a fistful of rubles on the counter, and books it out the door.  
  
  


“H-hello, darling,” he coos sweetly when he answers the phone. He tosses the cereal in the passenger seat and revs the car’s engine.  
  
  


For a solid ten seconds, all he hears is a cacophony of gurgling infant screeching. Then, in a dark, gravelly voice: “If you’re not home in ten minutes I’m burning your prized first edition Yuuri Katsuki body pillow,” followed by the silence of an ended call.   
  
  


(The drive home is normally seven minutes, Viktor makes it in three.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/157503724023/also-nextgenkidfic-p)


	2. viktor is a sleeping beauty...in some fanfiction somewhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the fanfiction trope ask meme. The prompt was "watching the bae sleep while the moonlight streams through the window onto their heavenly form."

_Viktor lays in bed, the moonlight catching on the soft splay of his long curling lashes. He hums in his sleep–a melodic sound–gentle and lilting, as though he is reciting a siren song, rather than uttering a symphony of unconscious murmurs._  
  
  


_Moonlight glitters through his white, gauzy curtains. They float in the easy summer breeze, casting shimmering waves of light over Viktor’s prone body. Crystalline stars shine brightly in the inky black sky, catching in Viktor’s spun silver hair and pooling around his marble skin in a glowing blue halo._  
  
  


_The heavens lean into his window, marveling at their creation. Truly, a more angelic sleeping form has never existed._    
  
 

Yuuri snorts and clicks off his phone. He sets the cell on his bedside table, sitting up to pet the poodle sprawled out over his legs. “Fanfiction sure is fanciful, huh, boy?” He whispers, smiling when Makkachin sleepily wags his tail in agreement.  
  
  


Yuuri settles back into the pillows, turning to nuzzle his face into Viktor’s chest. “If only they could see you now.” Yuuri cranes his neck up to marvel at his husband.  
  
  
  
Viktor gurgles and snorts in reply, quieting only momentarily before turning towards Yuuri with a loud fart. The snoring starts up almost immediately after, his mouth hanging open with a sound not unlike that of a demon possessed hyena with a head cold emanating from his throat. Viktor smacks his lips and a fresh line of drool drips down his face, glistening brightly in the blue moonlight.  
  
 

Yuuri wipes his husband’s cheek with the corner of a pillowcase and reaches his arm back to flip on the table fan. The whirring blades snap to life, muting Viktor’s snores behind the sound of whooshing air. Yuuri shivers and snuggles in closer to his husband, jerking back when Viktor’s ice cold foot touches his leg.  
  
  


“Goodnight, angel,” he huffs with a half smile. He curls a hand into Viktor’s pajama top and closes his eyes, lulled to sleep by the steady rhythm of his husband’s rumbling chest.   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/157497015003/tropes-watching-the-bae-sleep-while-the-moonlight)


	3. Yuuri gets revenge and it's just as non-threatening as it sounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri & Viktor settle their disputes via social media like responsible adults.
> 
> (I wrote this while drunk and I'm sorry)

“I can’t believe you posted that picture.”

  

“Yura, for the last time, I’m sorry.” Viktor leans a hip against the kitchen island and combs a hand through his hair. “I honestly didn’t think it was a big deal!”

 

“Haven’t you ever heard of _privacy_?” Yuuri asks. “I was drunk!”

 

“Maybe the first time, but the second and third?”

  

“Mari-neesan follows you on twitter!” Yuuri stares wide-eyed at his phone screen. “ _Kaasan_ could see it.”

  

“Yuuri, darling, I’m sure it’s nothing she hasn’t seen before.” Viktor placates gently. “She did raise you, after all.”

 

Yuuri shakes his head at the ceiling. Sure, his Mom has seen some things, but he was just a kid then. This is different. He’s an adult. And now the whole twitterverse and beyond will know Yuuri’s naked truth: he has a sizeable…problem with taking out the trash.

 

  

 **Viktor Nikiforov** ✔ @v_nikiforov  
let it be known that Japan’s ace skater and best husband of my heart @katsuki_y is garbage at taking out the garbage #husbandshaming 

[attached image]

 

 **Viktor Nikiforov** ✔ @v_nikiforov  
he doesn’t even replace the liner????

 

 **Viktor Nikiforov** ✔ @v_nikiforov

 

 

Yuuri grips his phone so hard his knuckles turn white, staring at the attached image of three black garbage bags leaning shamefully next to the trashcan (and a sunglasses wearing Makkachin for…some reason).

  

“I’ll remove the tweets,” Viktor tells him, reaching into his pocket for his phone.

 

“No.” Yuuri shakes his head, his shoulders slumping. “If you do that it’ll just make me look worse.”

 

“It’s really not such a big deal, solnyshko,” Viktor reassures, hesitantly patting his husband’s shoulder.

 

Yuuri has just turned around to nuzzle himself into Viktor’s embrace when both their phones buzz. It’s a text from Phichit. “ _Glad to see married life hasn’t changed the trash boy I remember from college_ ,” Yuuri recites in a monotone. “I’m so getting you back for this,” he breathes into his husband’s chest.

 

* * *

 

A week and a half later, Viktor has all but forgotten the Twitter trash fiasco. He is lying on his and Yuuri’s bed, scrolling Buzzfeed while Yuuri showers. He pauses when he catches an article sporting his husband’s name. It’s not exactly uncommon to find their daily lives recorded by media outlets, but it is less likely in the off-season.  

  

He skims the article, knitting his eyebrows as he goes. Viktor shakes his head and pushes himself from the bed, making his way to the attached bathroom and knocking lightly on the door. “Yuuri?”

  

Yuuri is startled from his stirring rendition of ‘ _Genie in a Bottle_ ’ (including such lyrical enhancements as “if you wanna be with me / baby there’s some ice to skate / I’m a skater in an ice rink / gotta lutz me the right way”) by his husband’s voice.

 

“Vitya?” He asks, shutting off the water. “What’s wrong?”

 

“Just wondering if you’d know anything about this.” Viktor pulls back the curtain. “ _Yuuri Katsuki-Nikiforov: ‘ **I Got 99 Problems but a Dish Ain’t One**_.’” Yuuri blinks, wide-eyed, and covers his mouth with a snicker. Viktor smirks at him and continues, “ _the figure skating fan community is abuzz today with the most recent release from Katsuki-Nikiforov’s well-known Archive of Our Own account, viktuuri5lyfe. The five thousand word fictional document chronicles the 4CC gold medalist’s attempts at getting his husband to do the dishes_.”

  

Viktor raises an eyebrow and lunges at his husband. Yuuri squeals and flies from the bath, slipping over soap suds as he runs for shelter. Viktor turns tail and follows him **—** eyes glued to his phone as he paces after the wet footprints. “ _The evocative piece concludes with a surprise candlelit tryst. Viktor Katsuki-Nikiforov **—** donned in nothing but a poodle print apron and blue rubber gloves **—** stands before a rose petal ringed sink. The glow of the candlelight shines in his eyes as he lovingly scrubs soap over each dirty dish_.” Viktor looks up from his phone to see Yuuri wrapping himself in a window curtain. “Seriously?”

  

Yuuri snorts loudly and Viktor reaches to pinch the approximate location of his husband’s side. “ _The fictional account could be taken as simple parody_ ,” Viktor continues, “ _if not for Yuuri Katsuki-Nikiforov’s ending plea for readers to popularize the fanfiction in order to garner his husband’s attention. Viktor Katsuki-Nikiforov is well-known for reading fanworks involving him and his husband. We have previously reported on his Twitter rants regarding the popular ‘cheating partner trope_ …’” Viktor clears his throat and closes the article.

 

Yuuri pops his head out of the curtain, a rivulet of soapy water trailing from his hairline down the bridge of his nose. “I said I’d get revenge,” he laughs. “Are you mad?”

 

Viktor wants to pretend to be, but it’s hard when his husband is pink-cheeked and bright-eyed **—** damp hair curling around his smiling face like a delighted, newly-washed puppy.

 

“No, solnyshko.” He rolls his eyes, using his thumb to wipe the suds from his husband’s face. “More amused than anything.” Viktor takes Yuuri’s hand in his and gently tugs him out of the curtain. “But you can still make it up to me if you want.”

 

Yuuri lets himself fall forward into Viktor’s chest. “Hmm, how’s that?”

 

“Let me finish washing your hair for you?”

 

* * *

 

Viktor has just finished washing the shampoo from Yuuri’s hair and turned around to let Yuuri massage shampoo into his scalp when realization hits. “Wait, viktuuri5lyfe is _you_?” He gasps.

 

Yuuri’s hands still. “You…you didn’t _know?_ ”

  

Viktor turns around to gape at his husband. “I do _not_ have a foot fetish, Yura!” He reaches his hands forward to tickle attack him.

 

“Tell it to your fans,” Yuuri gasps through his laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/157629639788/yuuri-viktor-settle-their-disputes-via-social)


	4. timestamp meme (and lots of drunk shenans)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for the [timestamp meme](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/160460876808/timestamp-meme). Occurring 3 hours after the happenings of [American Pie](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10556044).
> 
> All you really need to know is that Yurio babysits his drunk Dads at a Waffle House in Georgia at 3am. (but the original fic is short, so read it! if you like reading about drunk shenans, anyway)

“What the fuck did you say to him?” **  
**

 

“I dunno,” Yuuri whines from his position sprawled out on the sidewalk. He loves his husband dearly, but chasing him around small town Georgia for three hours while straddling the intersection of drunk and hungover is not his ideal way to spend a morning.

 

The soon to be sweltering summer sun is already peeking out over the nearby woods and warming the concrete under Yuuri’s cheek and he thinks he’ll just stay here forever. This is his home now. Maybe he can befriend the black ants marching a path across his hand and convince them to bring him an orange San Pellegrino and some Pringles.

 

“Yura!” Viktor’s yells interrupt his thoughts—it’s not their existence that’s disturbing, but the direction from which they are coming.

 

Yuuri squints up at the cloudless sky, his glasses have apparently disappeared somewhere. He’ll worry about that later because right now there seems to be a husband-shaped blob waving down at him from the Waffle House roof.  

 

“Get your ass down here!” Yurio shouts up at him. “And put your fucking clothes back o-” Yurio’s words are muffled by Viktor’s underwear being flung into his face. Yuuri is just sober enough to appreciate his husband’s aim…and the fact that he is now completely nude.  

 

Yuuri pushes himself up on his elbows, filled with a new sense of purpose. He stumbles to his feet—careful not to squash his new ant friends—and joins Yurio’s side. “It’s okay,” he reassures him, patting his cheek with the calm of a zen drunk master.

 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Yurio demands as Yuuri picks up his husband’s underwear and fits it snugly over his head.

 

“What I have to,” Yuuri replies stoically. He starts climbing up a nearby shrub and—after falling on his ass no less than four times—strips off his clothes and starts scaling a gutter.

 

Yurio gapes at him. “What are you—!?”

 

“They were weighing me down,” Yuuri grunts, kicking the pants leg off his ankle and hoisting himself up to the roof. The show of strength isn’t inhuman, but it _is_ impressive for the amount of alcohol he has consumed.

 

Either way, Viktor enjoys the way his biceps strain under the pressure. He holds out a hand and tugs Yuuri up the rest of the way.

 

“What are we doing up here again?” Yuuri pants when he’s safely draped across the warm shingles. He sits up and pulls the underwear off his head, holding Viktor’s hands as he steps back into them. Tantrums aside, he doesn’t want him going to jail for public indecency.

 

“You said the waffle was so good you could marry it,” Viktor whines, plopping down next to Yuuri. “But you’re supposed to be married to _me_.” He drops his head onto the cushion of Yuuri’s soft belly and absentmindedly kneads his fingers into it.  

 

“I’m sorry, honey,” Yuuri soothes and pets Viktor’s head. “But I love _you_. Husbands aren’t for eating, only waffles.”

 

Viktor can’t really argue that. Husbands _aren’t_ for eating, not in the conventional way, anyway (despite what the new vore Internet craze he’s sent Yurio many concerned letters about would have him believe). So he picks his head up and kisses Yuuri on the nose. “You smell like lawn.”

 

“I fell down a hill earlier.” Yuuri smiles. Twice, actually, but only once was accidental.  

 

“Should we go down to Yurio?” Yuuri asks, peeking over the edge.

 

Viktor hums, his eyes pointed over the horizon. “Let’s watch the sunrise for a bit first.”

 

Yuuri doesn’t argue. It’s nice to spend quiet time with his husband—even if they’re mostly nude on top of a Waffle House. “It’s all blurry,” he mumbles, squinting.

 

“Oh.” Viktor plops his glasses on the bridge of his nose and the sunrise sharpens into a vivid kaleidoscope of blue and orange. “There you go, solnyshko.”

 

“Thanks, Vitya,” Yuuri leans his head on his husband’s bare shoulder. Then, after a few quiet minutes—punctuated only by Yurio’s yelling and the blaring of a distant siren—“where were you keeping those?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/160494745098/three-hours-after-the-end-of-american-pie-p)


	5. food fight

“Ah, Vitya, we’re out of almond milk.”

 

Viktor looks up from his freshly poured bowl of cornflakes and shrugs. “That’s fine,” he opens the fridge and takes out a bottle of Frost **®** Arctic Blitz **™** Gatorade. 

 

“You’re not serious.” Yuuri looks up from his own breakfast, upper lip curled in disgust.

 

Viktor finishes pouring sports drink into his cereal and caps off the bottle. “I’ve eaten worse, honey,” he says, spooning up a huge mouthful. And, yeah, so has Yuuri. He was once a broke college student living in a dorm, after all. But as a married, adult(ish), 28 year-old person with a mortgage and a steady income, he feels as though he has graduated past the days of moderately inedible concoctions. 

 

“I used to have strawberry Jell-O with honey for breakfast during the off season,” Viktor reminisces, slurping noisily around his spoon.

 

“That’s gross,” Yuuri grimaces, but then—because he can’t help but be competitive—follows it up with, “I ate rice and mayonnaise every morning for two months once.” 

 

“Hmm.” Viktor polishes off his bowl and sets it in the sink. “Mayonnaise is better with noodles.” 

 

It should’ve ended there—with Yuuri scolding Viktor for not putting his dish in the dishwasher and both of them making a huge fuss out of waving salutations to Makkachin on their way to practice—but Yuuri can’t stop mulling over past strange and lazy food creations in his head. He can win  _ this _ ...whatever it is. 

 

“I wasn’t allowed sugary drinks when I was a kid,” Yuuri announces when he leans on the boards to catch his breath. “I used to buy  hard candies  with my allowance and melt them in water bottles.”

 

Viktor laughs, wiping at Yuuri’s sweaty forehead with a towel. “That’s so cute, solnyshko. Reminds me of the time I tried to make homemade V8 by blending Spaghetti O’s and broccoli.”

 

Yuuri scowls and pushes himself back on the ice. 

 

“During finals week, I kept myself going by blending ice with Mountain Dew, Monster, and a 5-Hour Energy,” Yuuri tells Viktor over lunch.   

 

Viktor purses his lips in concern and smooths back Yuuri’s hair from his forehead. “How are you still alive?”

 

Yuuri doesn’t have an answer that isn’t overly sentimental so he settles for leaning forward and pecking Viktor on the lips. They both ignore Yurio’s loud gagging in the background. 

 

“And  _ I _ thought it was bad when I ate a whole jar of peanuts and had to go to the hospital,” Viktor laughs. Yuuri is properly sympathetic, but he can’t help but feel betrayed. 

 

“Yakov, which sounds grosser,” Viktor corners his coach on their way to the lockers, “cold tomato soup concentrate eaten out of the can-”

 

“Or a tortilla with butter pickles and mustard,” Yuuri jumps in excitedly. 

 

Yakov grimaces and they both feel a surge of pride. “I expect this from Vitya, but  _ you _ ,” Yakov shakes his head at Yuuri. They consider this round a tie. 

 

They’re still stuck in a stalemate by the end of practice, Yuuri countering uncooked ramen sprinkled with soy sauce to Viktor’s melted cheese sticks on bread. They both know there’s only one real way to settle the matter.

 

“What the shit is this,” Yurio scowls at the meals in front of him. “I thought you invited me over for  _ dinner _ .”

 

“This  _ is _ dinner,” Viktor smiles, and Yuuri nods his agreement. 

 

“Okay, Yurio—” Yuuri slides into the seat next to him, making a show of leaning his chin on his hand and fluttering his eyelashes. He’s knows it’s not right to exploit Yurio’s misguided crush on him, but at the same time...Viktor’s going down. “We just need you to tell us which meal is grosser.”

 

“ _ Grosser _ !?” 

 

“This lovely bowl of chicken noodle soup, garnished with a spoonful of chunky peanut butter.” Viktor shows off the food with a hand flourish and toothy smile like those glittery ladies on the Price is Right. 

 

“Or—” Yuuri slides the steaming bowl away—“this chicken and broccoli hot pocket, resting in a bed of buttered noodles.”

 

“Like I’m eating this shit!” Yurio pushes both dishes away. Soup and greasy noodles slop over the kitchen table and Makkachin skitters around underneath, ready to devour anything that falls to the floor. “You’re both fucking disgusting.”

 

They end up ordering pizza. Yurio’s grumpy about it but still eats half the pie on his own. They agree to let it end with a tie later that night—Viktor’s head pillowed against Yuuri’s soft stomach and Yuur’s fingers combing mindlessly through Viktor’s hair. Neither of them is ready to admit defeat, but in the end, they did get to troll Yurio. And really, that’s reward enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/160522920573/food-fight)


	6. star struck

Yuuri knows from experience that Viktor is just a regular guy. One that managed to win five consecutive golds, set new world records, and flip the skating world and its expectation of what constitutes a reasonable routine on its head, but still.   **  
**

Even so, after half a decade of marriage and learning to help each other though the less glamorous aspects of being a human navigating the world—it sneaks up on Yuuri, sometimes: the realization of ‘ _holy shit this is Viktor Nikiforov™ my childhood idol_.’

 

Thirty-year-old Yuuri is privy to things about Viktor’s life that fifteen-year-old Yuuri could’ve never dreamed. Intimate things that extend the trivia bullet points in the Figure Skate Life articles rotting in crumpled piles under his childhood bed. Like how Viktor’s snores sound like a bullfrog gargling marbles when he’s really sleep deprived or how he has very specific hair-related rituals involving mayonnaise and egg whites that Yuuri has a feeling have more to do with allaying his fears of his receding hairline than nourishing his follicles.

 

Yuuri’s star struck moments never seem to happen when he’d expect, like at the skating rink, watching Viktor transition from an effortless triple axel into a flying sit spin.

 

Instead, they tend to manifest when it’s just the two of them settling into the interstitial moments between the major plot points of their lives. One minute, Yuuri’s sprawled out on the couch—the laptop on his belly warming the sliver of skin his hiked up shirt reveals. The next, he’s being called over to the bathroom to hand his husband a roll of toilet paper through a crack in the door.

 

It’s a familiar routine—Viktor can never seem to remember that toilet paper is an integral part of the human waste to toilet exchange—but for whatever reason, this time Yuuri feels the need to text Phichit about it later.

 

**(20:14) I can’t believe I just handed Viktor Nikiforov toilet paper through the door??? He didn’t even pull up his pants?????**

 

(20: 15) You mean Viktor Nikiforov-Katsuki, the man you married five years ago and whose hand you held through a colonoscopy last Spring?

 

**(20:15) ??? I mean I guess?????**

 

It’s a joke at its core—their own personal meme.

 

‘ **Oh my god Viktor Nikiforov just took a dirty plate out of the sink and reused it???** ’

 

‘ **Viktor Nikiforov just asked me if I want to go get ice cream. It’s 4 am and I’m ??? ? ??** ’

 

There’s an aspect of truth to it, though. Yuuri’s come a long way with his anxiety and self-esteem since his Detroit days, but there remains a persistent, needling part of him that will never quite believe he’s worthy of the love he receives. It was hard enough to come to terms with his family’s affection, and their love is meant to be unconditional.

 

But despite what Yuuri might believe, Viktor’s not immune to it, either. It hits him unexpectedly, like when he’s chasing Yuuri around their apartment because “your toenails are talons, Yuuri, _honestly_ why do you let them get so long? How is that even comfortable?”

 

Yuuri squeals and shields himself behind Makkachin, insisting that he’s the toenail Samson and if Viktor trims them, he’ll lose all of his powers.

 

“What powers?” Viktor folds his arms over his chest with a crooked smile.

 

“Toenail related ones,” Yuuri says, slapping the nail clippers out of Viktor’s hand.

 

Viktor stands there—watching Yuuri laugh all crinkle-eyed and rosy-cheeked—and he just wants to sit on the floor and cry because ‘ _holy shit this is The Boy Who Saved My Life™_ ” and how did he ever get so lucky?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/160848852708/star-struck)


	7. shock to the heart

 

 

Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov-Katsuki are going to live forever.

 

At least, they’ve both promised each other that they will, and other than the time Yuuri missed gold at the GPF in Barcelona (“a complete travesty of an underscoring,” Viktor will confide in private), they don’t go back on their promises.

 

That’s why Viktor finds it a huge breach of trust when Yuuri wakes him up at 4am—hand to his chest—complaining of heart palpitations. They waste no time in bustling him to the hospital. Heart disease runs his family—his Dad having suffered a second heart attack only three years ago—and Yuuri is at the age where the same happening to him is a legitimate concern.

 

Viktor holds his husband’s hand while they wait for the results of his x-ray and blood tests, dizzy from the white walls and sterile smell. He can’t imagine a world without Yuuri in it, and he doesn’t want to. Their 25th anniversary is next year—they’re already knee-deep in plans of renewing their vows in Hasetsu. The future isn’t guaranteed—Viktor knows—but Yuuri’s presence next to him is meant to be a given.

 

Viktor pulls Yuuri’s hand up to his face, pressing the heated knuckles against his cheek.

 

“Hey,” Yuuri says because he knows what his husband is thinking. “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

Viktor looks at Yuuri’s gentle laugh lines and graying hair and fights back tears. ‘ _You better not_ ,’ he can’t force the words out around the knot in his throat. ‘ _I don’t know how to survive without you_.’

 

And _god_ , did he ever?

 

It turns out to be just indigestion—gas—probably from the late night ice cream. They’re getting too old to eat like they did in their twenties. They know it, but some habits are hard to break.

 

Yuuri flushes red when the doctor tells him, but Viktor is too relieved to understand his embarrassment. He scoops Yuuri into his arms and imagines how nice it would be if he never had to let go. He does, regrettably, because they have to check out and the doctor has other patients to see.

 

Anyway, Viktor wants to get out of this place with its scary machines and urgent announcements, even if it means sacrificing his husband’s tight embrace. Viktor schemes up diet changes and new exercise regimes on the drive home, glancing down to check that Yuuri’s seat belt is buckled no less than four times when he drifts off beside him.

 

They do end up going to Hasetsu the next year, and declare their undying love for one another (“in sickness and in health, but you’re not allowed to die”) in front of their loved ones for the second time.

 

“More like the two millionth time,” Yurio later jokes.

 

Yuuri and Viktor can’t find it in themselves to argue. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/160951575808/shock-to-the-heart)


	8. do you even lift?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> inspired by the tiny manga image of [Yuuri lifting Viktor](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/161055440388/cutiepieminho-yuuri-lifting-victor)

Viktor is three inches taller than Yuuri, weighs a good twenty pounds more than him, and is generally broader and bigger than his husband in nearly every way. Yet — despite popular opinion of what that must mean for their “relationship roles”—he loves for Yuuri to carry him.

 

It started innocently enough, as a joke during the choreography stages of their first pair skate. “You know I live to surprise the audience—” Viktor watched Yuuri nod with an amused smile—”which is why you’ll be performing all the lifts.”

 

What he _hadn’t_ expected was for Yuuri to set his mouth in a determined line, grab Viktor under the armpits, and lift him several inches off the ground. 

 

Viktor _also_ hadn’t expected for his heart to start thundering in his throat and for a molten red blush to bloom all the way up to his ears, but in retrospect, maybe he had hoped for this kind of outcome. 

 

Either way, it set off a chain of events that Viktor in no way had any control over.

 

He’d had a little too much to drink at the banquet that year. Totally understandable when you consider his exhilaration from getting engaged to the love of his life and rediscovering his passion for the sport he’d dedicated his life to. In that state—bubbling over with endorphins—It hadn’t been hard for Chris to coax him into drinking more champagne than he could gracefully handle.

 

Drunk Yuuri might be a gazelle on the pole, but Viktor leaned more towards stampeding buffalo if the post drinking bruises were to be believed. 

 

Anyway, this particular night, his inebriated stumbling wasn’t a problem because he had a handsome, lovely, considerably less drunk fiancé to carry him home. Even with Barcelona swirling around him in dizzy kaleidoscopes of starlit skies and neon, it _did_ something to Viktor—being draped over Yuuri’s back, feeling every muscle shift against his stomach as Yuuri carried him down the busy street to their hotel room.  

 

After that, gravity became somewhat of a plague to Viktor. “It weighs on me more heavily,” Viktor explained when Yuuri carried him over the threshold after their wedding. “A real malady, not to be taken lightly.” 

 

And Yuuri didn’t complain about it. Not at first, anyway.

 

“Yura,” Viktor says on their way back home after grocery shopping. “Does gravity seem especially heavy to you today?”

 

“Vitya, I can’t carry you _and_ the groceries.” Yuuri slides the handles down to his elbows just in time to catch his husband when his knees wobble and he falls back into Yuuri’s chest. 

 

It happens again later that week, on their way to practice, and once more when they go out for ice cream after dinner.

 

“Maybe you should see a doctor,” Yuuri grunts, carrying his husband down the shoreline while Makkachin chases after the foam of each breaking wave. 

 

“It’s okay,” Viktor smiles into Yuuri’s neck, tightening his hold around his shoulders, “I think I can learn to live with this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/161062229628/do-you-even-lift)


	9. breakout star

“ _cured my depression, watered my crops, cleared my skin_.”

 

Viktor’s seen this particular statement pop up a few times while playing anonymous quality control for the comment section on Yuuri’s ISU articles. He’s inclined to agree with the sentiment—Yuuri has definitely done wonders for _his_ depression. But he never took the meme as seriously as when he woke up on the Tuesday of his first week without Yuuri to a huge cystic zit on his chin.

 

It isn’t a crisis. Viktor mastered the artistry of concealer long ago when he turned thirteen and his body decided to take the stress of puberty out on his face. Still, it’s been a long time since he’s had a blemish of this caliber emerge, and it’s annoying to see years spent painstakingly formulating a foolproof skincare routine get laid to waste by the stress of being away from his fiancé.  

 

‘ _I’m just overreacting_ ,’ Viktor thinks, taking extra care to properly exfoliate the spot with his Clarisonic. There’s climate change to account for, not to mention the sweaty rigorous practices that come with trying to return to competition shape before Europeans.  
  


He makes sure to wash his pillowcase and sweat rags that evening, does a Bentonite clay mask, and even turns down an offer for a late night ice cream run with Mila. Which makes it all the more offensive when he wakes up the next morning with a whitehead in his hairline.   

 

“You know, you’re not the only one suffering,” he tells his skin, dabbing a q-tip of diluted tea tree oil over the angry blemish. “I miss him, too!”

 

He still doesn’t fully believe that Yuuri is the source of his random breakout until the following weekend when he wakes up to twin painful pimples forming in the corners of his mouth. “Yuuri,” he whines over Facetime, “it’s an emergency.”

 

Yuuri has grown used to Viktor’s particular brand of emergency (things like backed up toilets and his favorite cereal brand getting discontinued), so he only smiles and laughs a little. “What’s wrong?”

 

“I need you to send me something that smells like you.”

 

Yuuri raises his eyebrows because… _oh_.

 

“Not for that,” Viktor waves him off, frowning at his tiny face in the corner of the screen. He swears he can see something red popping up in the crease of his nostril. “My skin’s mad you’re gone.”

 

“Your ski-”

 

“I mean I miss you _more_ , it’s really just being a drama queen about the whole separation, but…” Viktor trails off with a sigh. “So could you mail me something?”

 

He receives the package nine days and five blackheads later. There’s a handful of onsen powder bags, a drawing from the triplets, some of the random Japanese treats Viktor had developed a taste for while living in Hasetsu, and folded on the bottom—cushioning it all—one of Yuuri’s sweaters.

 

Viktor’s seen Yuuri wear it often while lounging around the inn, he’s even worn it to bed on particularly cold nights. It’s navy blue, pilled at the wrists, moth-eaten at the collar, and the kind of comfortable that only years of over-wear can achieve. Viktor removes it from the box with a reverence normally reserved for Hermes or Versace. He leans back into the couch, presses it to his nose, and most definitely doesn’t shed a tear or two.

 

(Or if he does, Makkachin’s the only one to know about it.)

 

He wears it to bed that night—fingers curled against his forehead and wrists against his nose—and imagines that it’s Yuuri spooning him and not just his sweater. It’s not a perfect replacement, but it does seem to dispel some of the heaviness settling into his chest. He didn’t even realize how poor his sleep had been lately until he gets a good night of it.

 

The next morning, he isn’t so much surprised as relieved to find no new zits and his current ones healing nicely. Turns out, the fan comments weren’t a meme but a prediction. His Yuuri is the best brand of healing balm. He feels a fool for ever having doubted it.  

 

“We should start a garden,” he tells Yuuri during their Facetime call later that day, “with you around, we wouldn’t even have to water it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/161391297933/breakout-star)


	10. Makkachin is a guard dog...of some capacity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all I’m saying is hc that Yakov bought Makkachin for Viktor because he was tired of watching him get his heart broken by shitty boyfriends.

Early fame Viktor possessed an innate faith in humankind’s goodness that hadn’t yet been sullied by crooked reporters and the JJs of the world. His amiability made him perfect as a media darling, but visibility brought fame-grubbers: the kind of scum that Yakov could immediately pinpoint as dripping in ulterior motives but whose pandering was like a moth to a flame for a young, affection-starved Viktor. 

 

It was a problem. Especially when Viktor showed up for his fifth practice in two months with puffy eyes and a general disinterest towards any activity that didn’t involve staring at his phone or hanging on the boards, whining at Yakov that: ‘ _you’ll never understand the depth of my pain_.’ Quite an interesting assertion to make to someone currently undergoing a divorce, but Viktor was about the tenth teenager Yakov had coached through puberty at that point and he was well acquainted with the accompanying dramatics. 

 

(though he did weigh the repercussions of intentionally braining himself on the ice after being forced to listen to Britney Spears’ ‘Lucky’ for the thirtieth time in a row one week)  

 

Yakov fancied himself every bit the stereotypical Russian man, but even he knew telling Viktor to “toughen up” was a useless endeavor. The kid was sensitive and capricious—a crackling spark teetering on the brink of combustion. It made coaching him an unpredictable nightmare, but it was also part of what made his skating so compelling. 

 

Yakov’s relationship with Viktor at that time was (and still remains) something akin to father and son. In keeping with teenage tradition, a very hormonal, very love-struck Viktor was not at all receptive to Viktor’s lectures on relationships—well-intentioned though they may have been. Nor was Yakov particularly comfortable with doling out such advice, truth be told (see aforementioned divorce). The direct approach wasn’t the right one, but, Yakov thought—watching Viktor cry over a particularly tight shoelace knot one afternoon—something _had_ to be done. 

 

Inspiration struck in the form of a snaggle-toothed Cavalier King Charles, growling at him from a frilly pink carrier while he waited in line at the grocery store to buy a frozen dinner. “Sorry,” his owner had apologized, bopping the dog’s nose with her forefinger. “He doesn’t like men.” 

 

The words bounced around Yakov’s head while he climbed his apartment stairs, lingering even after he lowered himself into his favorite well-worn armchair with a glass of Russian Standard and a notebook of routine elements. A dog! it was perfect: a lifelong companion, a healthy outlet for Viktor’s love and affection, and, with any luck, a teeth-baring defender of his owner’s fragile heart.

 

The poodle Viktor picked out from the shelter a week later looked nothing like the brute guard dog Yakov had envisioned, but his skepticism was allayed when he witnessed Viktor turning down a date during his lunch break. “He doesn’t like Makkachin,” Viktor explained, snapping his phone shut with a huff. Irritation rolled off him in waves, but that afternoon’s run through of his new Shostakovich FS was his best yet.

 

Time went on, Viktor grew more famous and more weary about who he granted full access to his heart, and soon Yakov forgot why Makkachin had been adopted. He’d been in their lives for more than a decade, and his presence was as mundane as Georgi’s make-up experiments or Yuri’s broken phones. 

 

It wasn’t until years later when he witnessed Yuuri coaxing an arthritic Makkachin up the ice rink stairs that he remembered the dog’s original purpose. Yakov sat rinkside with Makkachin curled up by his feet—watching Viktor coach Yuuri with a smile Yakov hadn’t seen in years—and felt the kind of throat-tightening sentimentality that seemed to accompany old age.

 

Makkachin whined below him—his tail thumping from the sound of his owners’ voices—and Yakov bent down and scratched him behind the ear. “That’s a good boy,” he said, his words almost drowned out completely by his old pupil’s laughter. “That’s a very good boy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/161562918028/all-im-saying-is-hc-that-yakov-bought-makkachin)


	11. anyway I wanted to write something about Viktor's depression

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please don't hate me for this, I'll return to the regularly scheduled fluff immediately.

Viktor loves Yuuri with an intensity that startles even himself at times. He would do anything for Yuuri. It was a precedent Viktor set at the onset of their relationship when he left his home in Russia and flew over four thousand miles to woo him (and coach him, though that was more of a secondary motive if he’s honest).

 

But every so often—even through the blinding flare of Viktor’s affection—there are nights when waking up to light pooling beneath the bathroom door makes his heart lurch with something more akin to dread than empathy.

 

Viktor will go through the motions of dragging himself from bed, knocking lightly on the door, sitting next to Yuuri when he’s allowed in the room and kissing his trembling knuckles when he’s allowed to touch him, but it’s his body being propelled by the forces of muscle memory rather than by any actual desire to comfort and connect.

 

Viktor is an imposter. He can hear the lilting superficiality of his tone, and he knows Yuuri’s seen enough of Viktor’s old interviews to recognize it, too. These are pretty words backed by nothing—which is the majority of what Viktor feels lately.

 

It wouldn’t bother him so much if he could at least assert interest where Yuuri is concerned, but even then he finds the mental exercise of endlessly cross referencing what he _should_ be feeling with what he _actually_ feels to be exhausting. Anything approaching genuine emotion slips through his fingers and leaves him grasping clunky platitudes that are familiar on his tongue but make his breaths shallow and his chest burn like he’s trying to get away with something. Viktor desperately wants to be emotionally available, but the effort is monumental.

 

He wonders if Yuuri can sense it—if it’s triggering his anxiety—and the guilt is overwhelming.

 

“I love him so much,”  Viktor tells Chris during their weekly Facetime call.

 

“I know.”

 

“But sometimes I can’t…” Care. Think. Feel _anything_.

 

“That’s human.”

 

“I’m the worst, right?”

 

“Darling—” Chris takes a slow sip of wine, the bubbles from his bath stick to his fingertips and leave little crescents of fog on the glass—“please don’t take this the wrong way. Maybe you should talk to someone?”

 

Viktor kneads at his temples with his free hand. He had distantly hoped his relationship with Yuuri would be enough to dispel the creeping static that—starting in his teenage years—had liked to intermittently take up residence in his head. Their whirlwind romance had certainly seemed to do the trick for a while, but so had getting a belly button ring and cutting his hair and really anything that was new and exciting and subverting Viktor’s and every else’s expectations of him.

 

His relationship with Yuuri wasn’t a whim, but as he was now—mired in the mind-numbing apathy of another depressive episode—it was hard to convince himself otherwise.  

 

Viktor googles therapists after ending his talk with Chris and allowing himself a brief fit of panic to the tune of Sia’s ‘ _Breathe Me_ ’ played sixteen times back to back. He dreads having to listen to someone telling him that he isn’t cold and unfeeling—that it’s the imbalanced chemicals in his brain making processing emotions feel like trying to memorize the architecture of Yuuri’s hand through thick, woolen gloves.

 

But they’re _his_ chemicals and _his_ brain, so who’s to say he isn’t the one trying to jeopardize everything?

 

“I know you care about me,” Yuuri tells him months later when Viktor has finally worked up the courage to vocalize his concerns. They’re sprawled out on their bed after a late practice—Viktor propped up against the headboard and Yuuri’s head pillowed on his stomach. Yuuri fingers the little hole where Viktor’s bellybutton ring used to be, his soft breaths tickle the sensitive skin below Viktor’s navel and make his muscles contract. “You wouldn’t be worrying this much if you didn’t care.”

 

Viktor mindlessly combs his fingers through Yuuri’s hair. He realizes not for the first time how much his husband has grown in the course of their relationship. He wonders when Yuuri stopped being the one to worry about their partnership dissolving. The switch was so gradual he’d barely even noticed it. “You’re overdue for a haircut,” Viktor says.

 

The ‘I love you’ is there in the subtext. It used to be his and Yuuri’s sole means of communicating their infatuation—back when they were new and still unsure of each other. Now, it’s evolved into something of a game of flirty verbal ping pong.   

 

“I like it this length.” Yuuri rolls over so Viktor can see him pout. “You touch it more when it’s long.”

 

Viktor smiles and pushes Yuuri’s hair back from his forehead. “Because I can’t see your pretty eyes.” He leans down and kisses Yuuri, soft and chaste—then harder, deeper. Even after all this time, his heart skips a beat. “I love you,” he says when he pulls away. Sometimes euphemisms aren’t enough.

 

It occurs to Viktor later that night over a Netflix romantic comedy and Chinese take-out that his depression is a liar and what Yuuri and his therapist have been telling him for the better part of a year is true: maybe he _is_ too hard on himself. He knows in that moment—nestled under Yuuri’s arm, Makkachin drooling at his knee for a piece of pork lo mein—that he would do anything to beat back the depression that tries to detach him from his life and love. Even when languishing under the heart racing apex of his hopelessness, he cares _that_ deeply.

 

Viktor is not his depression any more than Yuuri is his anxiety. They don’t have to love those sides of each other, but they do have to learn how to live with them. It’s not suffering, it’s learning and growing, and it’s not as hard as it used to be.

 

He doesn’t have to do it completely alone, anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/161640316083/well-anyway-i-wanted-to-write-something-about)


	12. shaking in my doorway like a sentinel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the [concerned meme](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/163692392788/musingmemes-concerned-meme-are-you)
> 
> prompt, “sit down, you look faint”

It’s one of  _those_  days.

 

The skin around Viktor’s eyes is taut and a single strand of silver hair is glinting off his sleeve— one of many loosed from the sheer number of times he’s mindlessly dragged his fingers through it. Viktor is trying to follow Yuuri’s directions and be Viktor the coach, not Yakov the coach, but  _god_  if he isn’t starting to understand the old man better (or at the very least, the source of his early balding).

 

‘ _I should call him_ —’ Viktor thinks when Yuuri launches himself into his fourteenth consecutive failed attempt at a quadruple flip—‘ _and apologize._ ’ He winces when Yuuri’s heel catches and he hip checks the ice with a resounding thump and a flurry of powder.

 

The resultant silence is fragile and deadly—a fine sheet of ice over a lake of deep, black water. Viktor presses a finger to his mouth, unsure of how he’s meant to disturb it without casualty. “Yuuri, why don’t we—”

 

Yuuri stands and dusts off his pants. He doesn’t look at Viktor, he doesn’t really look anywhere. His eyes are wide and searching but not for anything Viktor could ever hope to see.

 

“What should I say,” Viktor had asked Yuuko months ago, watching from behind the shoe rental counter as Yuuri practiced figures a handful of yards and a million miles away. “When he…”

 

Yuuko’s smile had been a sad one. “Let me know if you find out.”

 

Viktor hasn’t found out, or at least, he’s only too recently realized that words are tinder for Yuuri’s mental conflagration.

 

Yuuri knows one bad practice isn’t fatal, and he knows that he can’t successfully perform a jump when his muscles are trembling with overexertion; but absorbed in the irresistible tide of his own mired thoughts and whatever dark places they’re intent on dragging him to, he can’t connect to that reality.  

 

So it’s Viktor’s job to be here—to buoy him—a bobbing anchor above the storm.

  
  
“Yuuri,” Viktor says when Yuuri starts building up speed again. “Let’s stop for today.”

 

Yuuri startles with a faint shake of his shoulders and a sharp intake of breath. He lets himself slow into a glide and Viktor hurriedly hands him his water bottle when he reaches the boards.

 

“I’m hungry,” Viktor says as way of explanation. It’s not the real reason he wants to stop, but it’s not a lie, either.

 

Yuuri’s fingers tremble so fiercely he’s barely able to hold his water bottle between sips. “It’s getting late,” he observes, staring up at the windows. Dusk always appears deceivingly dark against the bright interior of the rink. Viktor never thought to be grateful for that fact until just this moment.

 

“It  _is_  late. I bet dinner was ready ages ago,” Viktor studies Yuuri’s face, a frown playing at the corner of his lips. “You look faint,” he slips on his skate guards and lowers himself on a bleacher. “Sit down,” Viktor says, patting his lap for a laugh. Yuuri doesn’t laugh, but he does smile—a delicate wisp of a thing, but it makes Viktor’s heart race with a rush of relief and unbridled affection.

 

They’re getting better at this. It’s a giddy thought and cocky one, but for the moment he doesn’t begrudge himself of it. Not too long ago a scenario like tonight’s would’ve resulted in Viktor slipping into an imitation of the person he grew up perpetuating for the media and his fans by attempting to seduce Yuuri into submission through practiced hair flips and stilted platitudes that he himself has never found particularly helpful or uplifting.

 

“You know I’ve seen your old commercials on Youtube,” Yuuri had said during a particularly bad practice when he was tense and irritable from Viktor’s admittedly poor attempts to mollify him, “and you’re not a very good actor.”

 

It’s a learning process, and sometimes their shared shortcomings at communication still butt up against each other. But even with Yuuri’s habit of retreating into himself and Viktor’s search for what it means to  _be_  Viktor and not just play at being him—they’re pushing through it. Together.  

 

So honestly, while it may not be helpful to say so, Viktor knows Yuuri can conquer the quadruple flip. It’s incredibly easy in comparison.

 

“I’m hungry, too,” Yuuri settles himself on the bench next to Viktor. Their knees touch just a little, and Yuuri doesn’t move to correct it. “And tired. Do you think Makkachin could carry me back?”

 

“I’ll carry you both back,” Viktor tells him, flexing. “I may not be as strong as you, but I make up for it in spirit.”

 

To Viktor’s great surprise, Yuuri actually lets him. At least for the first ten minutes before Viktor trips over his own feet in his attempt to impress Yuuri by running, and Yuuri decides for the sake of their mutual safety that he is magically un-tired. It’s a good ten minutes, though, with Yuuri’s chest flush against Viktor’s back and their joint laughter skipping across the shore and scattering with the sound of the breaking waves.

 

It’s a cornerstone of Viktor’s memory: an event he plays back twenty years later while watching Yuuri’s sleeping face in the brittle morning light. It sticks with him even more than their riveting debate over pop idols at dinner and the hesitant, exploratory touches that came later that night.

 

In the end, Viktor never discovered the right words or even the right actions, but he did find that they weren’t necessary. They don’t need to have the answers and they don’t need to fix each other. Because love isn’t a problem to be solved or a curative spell to be recited, it’s just something you do—even when someone isn’t their ideal self, even when it’s not easy.

 

And that evening, walking back to Yu-Topia—knuckles grazing Yuuri’s—Viktor knows that he can just be there. He can love Yuuri. Really, he already does.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/163712599548/for-this-its-one-of-those-days-the-skin-around)


	13. ko'd by cuteness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the [concerned meme](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/163692392788/musingmemes-concerned-meme-are-you)
> 
> prompt, “did someone do this to you”

“Yuuri?” Viktor is sprawled on the floor at Yuuri’s feet. He has an old Ice Jewels issue spread open across his belly and his head pillowed on one of Yuuri’s discarded jackets. Yuuri doesn’t respond so Viktor tugs on the frayed hem of his pants leg before slipping his perpetually cold fingers beneath the veil of denim to trace the line of Yuuri’s knobby ankle. **  
**

 

“Mm.” Yuuri curls his toes into the floorboards. He can’t hear Viktor’s voice over the program music coursing through his headphones, but he can sense him stirring next to him—upsetting the tranquility of the bedroom with his restless energy. “What is it?” Yuuri asks, distractedly pulling back the speaker from one ear.  

 

“I’m gonna go to the dining hall—” Viktor inches Yuuri’s pants leg up with his knuckles and probes his fingers into the corded muscle of Yuuri’s calf— “see if anyone needs help with chores.”

 

Yuuri’s chin lifts almost imperceptibly. “‘Kay,” he says for added confirmation, chewing on his bottom lip before jotting something down in his notebook.  

 

Viktor squeezes Yuuri’s ankle—fingers warmer this time—and shuffles out of the room, leaving Yuuri to the self-assigned task of examining his Free Skate score for the emotional resonances of each isolated chord progression.   

 

It’s the last Yuuri hears from Viktor before the gnawing in his stomach becomes too painful to ignore and he finds himself moving towards the kitchen, spurred by basic human instinct and muscle memory. So it’s a little jarring when Yuuri finds Viktor there, leaned back in a chair with an angry purple bruise blooming on his temple and a wad of bloodied tissues pressed against his nose.

 

Mari had recently started attending boxing classes and Yuuri is admittedly not great at paying attention to those around him when his attention is otherwise occupied, but he’s reasonably sure he wouldn’t mix up “I’m gonna go help with lunch” with “I’m gonna go get myself punched.”

 

“What happened?” He asks, somehow managing to convey concern instead of the full blown panic he feels. His eyes flit over to Mari when she snorts a laugh over her cutting board. “Did someone do this to you?” His tone is maybe a little accusatory.

 

“Yeah,” Mari says over her shoulder in time with Viktor shaking his head. “You.”

 

“But—”

 

“Yuuri,” Viktor’s voice is muffled from the tissue. “How could you?”

 

Yuuri stands poised—eyes passing between his sister’s smirk and Viktor’s knitted eyebrows. He’s not sure if this some kind of joke, but he’s starting to seriously consider the possibility that he’s been sleepwalking again or that his parents are secretly harboring an evil twin. “How could I…?”

 

“After everything we’ve—” Viktor cuts himself off, closing his eyes with a sad, drawn-out sigh. “You’ve been holding back on me all these months!”

 

“I…?”

 

“Chill,” Mari intervenes, setting her knife down and resting a hand on her hip. “He fell down the stairs helping me with the laundry.”

 

Yuuri’s lips slacken into a pending question because Viktor is one of the most graceful people he knows—on and off the ice—and even if the forces of gravity imposed on him the same unbiased influence it did the rest of the world, Yuuri doesn’t understand why or how  _he_  could possibly be the cause of it.

 

At least, he doesn’t at first. The answer reaches him quicker than the question can form on his tongue—in the shape of a flickering mental schematic behind his eyes. The downstairs laundry room, or, more importantly, the downstairs laundry room stairwell: otherwise known as a descending timeline for Yuuri’s many framed performance photos, ages six to eleven.

 

“Yeah—” Mari recognizes the look of wide-eyed realization on her brother’s face—“you’ve got it.”

 

“The little dalmatian costume.” Viktor makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “I’m dead. I’m dying.”

 

“Viktor…” Yuuri’s lips tremble with a poorly held back smile. He hides the bright red flush he  _knows_  is moving its way up his neck by going to the freezer to get Viktor an ice pack.

 

“I’ll take an apology anytime,” Viktor calls after him, wiping at his bloody nose. “And don’t think I’m not going to ask Kaasan for doubles!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/163738636003/interested-to-see-where-youd-take-did-someone-do)


	14. a cheating fic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the [concerned meme](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/163692392788/musingmemes-concerned-meme-are-you)
> 
> prompt, "how long has this been going on?"

Viktor wanders back to his room after a long game of mahjong with Hiroko and Toshiya to find Yuuri curled up in bed with his 3DS—Makkachin spooned up against his side. Viktor leans against the doorframe and folds his arms over his chest. “Well, well, well. How long has _this_  been going on?”

 

Yuuri startles and hides his eyes behind his Nintendo—a smile playing at the corner of his lips. “It’s not what it looks like!”

 

“She’s  _naked_ , Yuuri!” Viktor paces across the room and yanks up the sheet to cover Makkachin’s body.

 

Yuuri tosses his game to the side and wraps his arms around Makkachin. “We didn’t want you to find out this way.”

 

“And in  _my_  bed?” Viktor covers his mouth with his hands. “How could you?”

 

Makkachin gives a confused boof and licks Yuuri’s cheek, and Viktor makes a sound not unlike a screeching pterodactyl. “Betrayed by own dog!”

 

He crawls onto the bed and drapes his body over Yuuri’s before he has time to escape. It’s punishment by squashing and has exactly 0% to do with Viktor’s jealousy over his dog’s penchant for cuddling Yuuri whenever and however much she wants.

 

“Noooo! Save me, Makka!” Yuuri’s voice is muffled by Viktor’s chest.

 

Makkachin wiggles her hips and wags her tail, snuffling at whatever bits of Yuuri she can reach beneath her master’s body, and Yuuri and Viktor shake with laughter—tears dotting their eyes.

 

“Hey, Yuuri?” Viktor asks when they’ve both settled down.

 

“Yeah?” Yuuri squeezes out of his compressed lungs. He wonders at what point Viktor intends to free him.

 

“Is polygamy legal in Japan?”

 

(“Even if it was, it’s typically frowned upon to marry your own daughter.”

 

“True.”

 

“And there’s the whole bestiality thing…”

 

“Right. Guess I’ll just stick with marrying you.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/163756414603/for-the-concerned-meme-how-long-has-this-been)


	15. hungry eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> honestly the new [romantic birthday official art](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/164024426523/jinlian-%E3%83%A6%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AA-on-ice-romantic-birthday) just makes me think that Viktor probably has a surprising kink for Yuuri feeding him

Most people would assume that Yuuri is the bigger eater in his relationship. It’s a shallow assumption—based mostly on Viktor and Yuuri’s respective physiques—and an incorrect one. Really, their love of food is mutual. Viktor, especially, revels in trying out all the local cuisine he can stomach during their travels, to the point where Yuuri has had to gently remind him that—while French pastries are undeniably delicious—they really don’t have the luggage space for thirty pounds of them. **  
**

 

They like food and they like to eat. Some of their best and most memorable early relationship moments happened around food (like the first time Yuuri played footsie with Viktor under a table crowded with their fellow skaters at a restaurant in Nagoya). So it shouldn’t really surprise Viktor–the way his heart lurches when Yuuri holds a fork up to his lips, offering him a bite of tiramisu.

 

Viktor’s hands are occupied by a wine glass and his own fork. He could easily set either item down to take Yuuri’s fork from his hand, but he doesn’t. Instead choosing to open his mouth and let Yuuri slide the custard in. Yuuri does—his eyes dark and dancing in the table’s flickering candlelight—and he licks his top lip almost imperceptibly just as Viktor closes his mouth around the tines.  

 

The feeling stirring in Viktor’s stomach is not a pure one and has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the desert (though it is soft and rich and  _oh so delicious_ , made more so by its mode of delivery).

 

After that, Viktor starts anticipating Yuuri’s cooking days with renewed enthusiasm. He’s always looked forward to it, anyway, because Yuuri makes Japanese dishes that are oily and rich and remind him of their days in Hasetsu (and because he looks mind-bendingly handsome in an apron). Viktor used to enjoy sitting on the opposite side of the bar, nursing a glass of Sapporo Draft and watching with hungry eyes whenever Yuuri would flip the vegetables in the skillet–his arms flexing.

 

Now, he prefers to hover around Yuuri’s back, tucking his chin against Yuuri’s shoulder for a taste of whatever he’s making.

 

“It’s just beef stock,” Yuuri laughs, scooping up a spoonful, anyway. He holds his hand underneath to keep stray drops from falling to the floor, and when the spoon enters Viktor’s mouth, lets his fingers move to Viktor’s cheek–brushing his thumb against Viktor’s temple with a gentle smile before taking back the spoon and turning back around to his cooking.

 

Viktor screams internally.

 

They start having sex on Yuuri’s cooking nights with calculable regularity, and Yuuri—because he is often more attentive to Viktor’s moods than even Viktor himself—notices.

 

“Vitya,” he says one night, a carton of ice cream cradled in his lap. They’re nestled together on the couch, Viktor’s cold toes wedged under his thigh.

 

Viktor looks up from his phone, eyebrows raised in a silent question.

 

“Want a bite of ice cream?” Yuuri already has a scoop of cherry garcia ready, the spoon poised between his fingers.

 

Viktor swallows dryly. “Of course, my lov–”

 

“In bed?” Yuuri cuts him off, the implication obvious from the sultry set of his eyelids.

 

Viktor will later swear he gave himself whiplash from nodding so hard.

 

The resultant evening is so good and so sweet that Viktor doesn’t even torture himself over it until the afternoon of the following day because  _really_??  _A feeding kink_???

 

But he thinks of how it felt when Yuuri brought his mouth to his, slipping cold ice cream across his tongue before tugging back on his lip—urgent and hungry—and can’t find it in himself to regret anything.

 

Anyway, a man’s gotta eat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/164032756653/youremarvelous-honestly-the-new-romantic)


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part of the rivals au I started with my friend [cutthroatpixie](http://cutthroatpixie.tumblr.com/)

“Vitya?” Yuuri pads out of the bedroom in nothing but his socks. Viktor doesn’t filet his fingers with the knife he’s using to chop tomatoes, but it’s a very near thing.

 

“Yes, beautiful?”

 

Yuuri leans his head against the doorframe. “Have you seen my underwear?”

 

Viktor knows which pair he’s talking about, but he pretends not to. He wipes his hands on his apron and walks past Yuuri over to the dresser to pull open the bottom drawer. “There you are, angel,” he says, holding a hand up to display the overflowing contents like a glittery model on a game show.

 

Yuuri folds his arms over his chest and tilts his head. “I looked, but I can’t find the ones I want.”

 

“Which ones would those be?”

 

“The blue ones.” Yuuri falls to his knees and starts parsing through his collection of rolled up boxer briefs again.  

 

“Half your underwear is blue,” Viktor says. He would know, he bought the majority of them.

 

“You know which ones I mean.” Viktor does, but he’s still not ready to admit it. “The striped ones, with the little pig cartoon on the leg?”

 

“You mean the ones with the giant hole in the crotch?” Viktor loves, worships, and adores every inch of Yuuri, but there’s something mildly disconcerting about seeing his husband’s ball try to squeeze its way out of a cotton prison like some kind of bulbous, hairy brain.

 

Yuuri sighs and sits back on his heels. “They’re  _comfortable_.”

 

“Why even bother with underwear?” Viktor settles on the floor behind Yuuri, wrapping his arms around his waist and pulling him into his lap. “I like you just like this,” Viktor breathes into Yuuri’s ear. His voice is low and sultry in a way that suggests someone playing at seduction rather than actually feeling the emotion behind it.

 

Yuuri squints his eyes, suspicious. Viktor has always been excessively demonstrative— sometimes Yuuri worries his husband might die if they don’t touch at least once an hour—but he hasn’t resorted to his superficial media voice with Yuuri since their first few awkward days of misunderstanding in Hasetsu. “What…did you do?” Yuuri asks because after five years of marriage he knows Viktor a little too well, and there’s no way this charade is coming from anything other than guilt.

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Viktor deflects, nuzzling his nose into Yuuri’s neck. “Can’t I just love my husband?”

 

“You can,” Yuuri says slowly, weighing the words in his head, “but maybe not when you’re trying to get away with something?”

 

Viktor wonders what happened to the days when the concept of “love” and expressing it openly without the safety of skating metaphors was enough to induce Yuuri into a blushing, stuttering mess. If pressed, Viktor would have to say he prefers this comfortable, familiar intimacy, even if it means it’s harder to deflect Yuuri’s attention away from his crimes.  

 

“They were nine years old.” Viktor pulls his head back from Yuuri and wraps his fingers loosely around his forearm, preparing himself for the intervention. “There has to be a law against letting underwear turn double digits.”

 

“You threw them away?” Yuuri gapes at his husband, visions of his old underwear being whisked off in the back of a dump truck flashing through his mind.

 

“May…be?”

 

“That was my favorite pair! They were perfectly worn in!”

 

“So you’ll work on wearing in a new pair!”

 

Yuuri sighs and blinks at a spot on the floor. He’s not really mad, but he will miss the comfortable, elastic-stretched waistband and the faint breeze on his balls. “I just wish you talked to me about it first.”

 

Viktor knows it’s wrong to think that Yuuri looks so utterly adorable while pouting over hole-y, thread worn underpants, but… “You’re right,” Viktor touches Yuuri’s knee—silent permission for a hug which Yuuri grants with a nod. “I’m sorry, solnishko.” They hold each other for nearing five minutes—long enough for Makkachin to come in the room, inspect them both with her cold probing nose, and then bounce out to the kitchen in search of fallen food scraps.

 

“You owe me a new pair,” Yuuri says when they finally part.

 

“Sure,” Viktor agrees easily. He’d bury Yuuri in presents—underwear or otherwise—if he’d let him. Spoiling Yuuri is one of his #1 pastimes. He’s not proud. (He’s a little proud.) “But I really don’t mind if you just want to go commando.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/164159443323/vitya-yuuri-pads-out-of-the-bedroom-in-nothing)


	17. Birthday Suit

Viktor gets his first taste of it in Hasetsu. **  
**

Yuuri sits in a pile of his old costumes one lazy evening—months after Onsen on Ice—parsing through swathes of gleaming panne velvet and sparkling sequined lace.

 

“You should try them on.” Viktor is sprawled out on his bed, lying on his stomach with his head propped in his hands. He brushes the hair from his face—still faintly wet from his after-ocean shower. “All of them.”

 

Yuuri looks up from the tumble of wine-colored velvet pleated over his fingers—Viktor’s costume from when he was 22 and toeing the line between the bombastic, energetic routines Yakov preferred and the quietly powerful sentimentality of his own personal choreography. His glasses gleam in the ambient light from Viktor’s bedside lamp. 

 

“It’s okay,” Yuuri’s voice is soft—the words plucked from his tongue with caution—like he’s scared to contaminate the history of Viktor’s career sewn into every stitch. He turns his attention back to the delicate golden embroidery on the sleeve. “Just looking is enough.”  

 

It’s strange, Viktor thinks, to be jealous of his past self. But he wants Yuuri to look at  _him._ The present him. The one who had spent the day chasing Yuuri up the shoreline, teasing him into the waves with feigned foot cramps and knocking his knees out from behind so he was forced to lean into Viktor for support.

 

Viktor wants Yuuri to pay attention to the him who observes Yuuri now in comfortable silence, eyes half-lidded with reckless affection.

 

“How did you get into it?” Yuuri’s eyebrows knit together as he trails his fingers carefully along the seams, searching for a zipper or a secret row of buttons.

 

Viktor folds his legs under him—his borrowed yukata dipping low enough to allow Yuuri a covert glance at his bare chest—and settles on the floor next to him, their knees barely grazing. “Here,” he says, taking Yuuri’s hand and guiding it to the hidden zipper extending from the hip to the inconspicuous hook and eye at the shoulder.  

 

Yuuri hums in the back of his throat and nods, dragging the zipper up and down once, then twice, in appreciative interest. “Clever.”

 

Viktor bumps their shoulders together. “Are you sure you don’t want to try it on?” He slips the costume from Yuuri’s hand and holds it up to the round slope of his cheek. “Mm, I knew it. The color looks gorgeous with your complexion.” Viktor thinks Yuuri would look gorgeous in a paper bag, but it’s probably still too early to say such a thing.

 

“Um,” Yuuri chews on his bottom lip.

 

“For me?” Viktor’s voice cants into a playful whine. His heart skips a beat when Yuuri presses his lips together and swallows hard—a faint blush rising in the apples of his cheeks as he nods his assent.  

 

Viktor doesn’t know if he should be embarrassed to have used himself for leverage or delighted that it actually worked. He tries not to appear over eager when Yuuri grabs the hem of his t-shirt and yanks it up over his head. The collar gets stuck on his ear and it takes everything in Viktor not to reach over and pull the shirt off the rest of the way.

 

He  _does_  grab the string of Yuuri’s sweatpants and pull the knot loose, which, in retrospect, is probably worse. ‘ _Definitely worse_ ,’ he mentally amends when the knot unravels in time with the sound of a short knock and the telltale squeak of the door being shouldered open.

 

“Yuuri, Vicchan, Kaasan wants to know if you—” Mari looks up from the basket of clothes in her arms and raises an eyebrow—quietly observing them: Yuuri’s shirt pulled up over his head, Viktor’s hand precariously close to Yuuri’s waistband. Viktor half expects her to scream or maybe march across the floor and slap him, but she is surprisingly composed compared to how Viktor is used to seeing these kinds of scenarios play out in books and movies. “I’ll tell her you’re busy,” Mari says simply, voice as deadpan as ever. “Lock the door next time,” she adds on her way out.   

 

Yuuri sputters and scrambles back into his shirt so fast he nearly elbows Viktor in the face. He doesn’t even re-tie his waistband before he’s tripping out into the hall, shouting unneeded explanations while Viktor follows at his heels—plucking up the back of his pants whenever they start to droop below his butt.

  

The interruption soundly ends any fantasies Viktor harbors of standing in as a one-man audience for a Yuuri Katsuki fashion show that evening, and the spandex, glitter-laden ghosts of Viktor’s costumed past are boxed up shortly after.

 

Even so, the mental image of Yuuri swathed in Viktor’s well-worn, well-loved garments needles at him like an annoying jingle that won’t stop blaring through his thoughts at inopportune times.

 

It isn’t just about the costumes, Viktor realizes when he drops his jacket around Yuuri’s shoulders weeks later during their post-workout cooldown walk across the shore. Yuuri had been faintly trembling—chilled by the September evening winds and his drying sweat—and he huddles into Viktor’s windbreaker with minimal argument, barely pausing in an animated story about his experience getting his driver’s license in America.

 

Yuuri recounts the time he accidentally drove counterclockwise on a clockwise roundabout—wrinkling his nose and hiding an embarrassed laugh into the jacket cuff that extends a good inch or two past his fingertips—and Viktor finds himself overcome by a dry mouth that had nothing to do with physical exertion.

 

He is officially losing it, he decides later in their hotel room in Beijing, watching from the foot of his stiff mattress as Yuuri paces around the room on the phone with his Mom—hair dripping wet from his shower, clad in nothing but Viktor’s bathrobe. Viktor thought he’d sobered up since dinner, but the mental exercise of parsing together how to explain to Yuuri that the robe is, in fact, Viktor’s and not the hotel’s without disturbing the vision that is Yuuri swaddled in pale blue plush cotton with an embroidered “V” on the lapel has his head swimming.

 

(“I thought it stood for ‘vacation,’” Yuuri shakes his head into his hands when Viktor is finally forced to re-pack the robe and shatter the illusion.

 

Viktor laughs and starts singing  _L.O.V.E_  because he’s giddy and happier than he ever imagined possible following Yuuri’s reckless display of devotion and their subsequent first kiss.)

 

Yuuri looks beautiful in everything he wears: his workout gear, the chinos he’d been gifted from his Uniqlo sponsorship, even the moth-eaten navy pullover he insisted on donning every night that winter, but nothing could quite compare to his red nose peeking over the top of Viktor’s favorite cashmere scarf or the maddening curve of his hips in Viktor’s old Britney Spears’  _Oops! I Did it Again_  era Halloween costume.    

 

“If you sigh one more time I’m replacing your shampoo with Nair,” Yurio growls over the laptop. He’s taken to stopping by Viktor and Yuuri’s place once a week for dinner and routine reviews. That was his original excuse for coming, anyway. In reality, he usually ends up watching reality tv with Yuuri or complaining about Yakov and Lilia and their swear jar and strict curfew enforcing.

 

Viktor’s elbow is on the table, his head in his hand, and his attention fully compromised by the sight of his husband passed out on the couch, snuggled up under Viktor’s Olympic jacket. “But Yurio,” Viktor whines, stretching out the syllables in a way he knows will annoy him, “he’s just so dreamy.”

 

Viktor can practically hear Yurio’s eye roll over the sound of his typing. “And why the fuck do you have a google search for ‘ _is it possible to be too in love with your own husband_?’”

 

The answer to Viktor’s fixation with Yuuri wearing his clothes doesn’t sink in until a few years into marriage. By that time, Viktor can barely distinguish between their scents anymore or the pile of dirty clothes in the hamper. He’s accidentally worn Yuuri’s clothes, too, more than a few times—arriving at the rink with relentless teasing from his students for not noticing that his sleeves were two inches too short. He never used to miss those kinds of details in his youth, but it was easy to be absent-minded when he had a sleepy husband climbing into his lap during breakfast and pressing warm kisses into his neck.

 

Viktor slips his wedding band on Yuuri’s finger one morning in late autumn like he has many times before. Yuuri is lying on top of him, his head nestled in the crook of Viktor’s neck. Their bare bodies press against each other—the shared body heat shielding them from the encroaching cold of the room.

 

“I’d marry you every day if I could,” Viktor tells him, twisting the loose ring around Yuuri’s finger.

 

Yuuri snorts into Viktor’s shoulder. “You have morning breath.”

 

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Viktor teases, tickling his fingers up Yuuri’s side.

 

Yuuri huffs faintly and takes Viktor’s hand in his own, removing Viktor’s ring from his finger and sliding it back into its well-indented home. “I do,” he smiles, looking up to meet Viktor’s eyes. Viktor wants to cry, but instead, he cheers and wraps his arms around Yuuri—kissing him so hard it chases the air from his lungs.

 

This intimacy is exactly what Viktor had been seeking whenever he’d pull Yuuri into his coat on late night ice cream runs or roll his own thermal socks up Yuuri’s feet after trimming his toenails. It was an expression of their bond—confirmation of their intertwining lives.

 

Viktor doubts he’ll ever tire of seeing Yuuri dressed in his clothes, but he also doesn’t require it with the same voracity he once had. The real proof of their connection is somewhere intangible, stirred into their coffee every morning and tied into their shoelaces when they leave their home—reflected in their inability to imagine a future without the other in it.

 

Yuuri and Viktor lay in bed for a while longer, counting breaths until their heartbeats synchronize. They need to take the dogs out and get ready for the day, but neither is in a hurry to extricate themselves from the moment.

 

“It’s our wedding morning,” Viktor reasons after thirty minutes of them saying they need to get out of bed but failing to do so.

 

“Right,” Yuuri laughs—“what is this, anyway, our thousandth?”

 

“Mm. 1,157th, actually.” Viktor traces his fingers along the rocky landscape of Yuuri’s spine, enjoying the way his skin blooms with goose pimples beneath Viktor’s touch. “And after all this time, you still wore your best suit for the occasion.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rebloggable [here](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/post/168027365608/birthday-suit)


End file.
